Can't Help Falling Read online

  Tyler glanced back down at Matty and frowned. He wondered for a moment why the sudden font of questions. All because it was Parent Day at a Cyclones game?

  “What makes you so curious all of a sudden?” Tyler asked, nudging Matty with his elbow.

  Matty shrugged sullenly, pulling his own hat down this time.

  This was new. The Matty that Tyler knew was always effusive and sweet and guilelessly talkative. Tyler sighed. All sorts of things were changing.

  Joy leaned around Matty, looking nervous, but joining in the conversation for the first time. “We were just talking about cousins is all. I have a lot of them.”

  “And I don’t have any,” Matty cut in, sounding like he’d woken up on Christmas morning to discover he’d gotten graph paper and mechanical pencils when the rest of his friends had gotten trips to Disney World.

  “Ah.” The pieces fell into place. “But if I had kids, you’d consider them your cousins.”

  Matty shrugged again. A little less sullen, a little more sheepish.

  At a loss for what to say, Tyler would have turned around to Sebastian for the assist, but he didn’t want to face Via, the woman with all the answers when it came to kids, or Serafine, who’d laser off his manhood with one haughty glance.

  “Good thing you have Joy, then,” Tyler said. “She’s as good as family.” He nudged Matty again and then leaned toward Joy. “And for the record, Joy, Matty’s not the only kid I like. You’re pretty cool too. And my little sister. She’s older than you guys by a few years, but I like her too.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding solemnly and looking relieved.

  “Besides,” Tyler continued, looking down at Matty, “you’re as close to a kid as I’ll ever get, Matlock. So, in a way, you’re kind of like your own cousin.”

  Matty pursed his lips, but this time Tyler saw that it was to hide a smile he wasn’t quite ready to give up. “That’s weird, Uncle Ty.”

  Tyler shrugged. “Life is weird, my friend. The sooner you learn the better.”

  They fell back into the rhythm of the game, Matty’s good mood restoring, especially when a pop fly landed three rows in front of them, the kids scrambling down to get it and missing it by a hair.

  Tyler rolled his eyes at the middle-aged man who snatched it up for himself and held it up to the booing crowd.

  But the near miss didn’t damper Matty’s spirits; he was back and buoyed by the joy of the game.

  Tyler, however, was bothered. He was bothered by the conversation between him and Matty, by Serafine’s gnawingly hot presence behind him. By the fact that he hadn’t gotten a minute alone to chat with Sebastian the entire day. The sun was pleasantly warm and the breeze was refreshing, but still, Tyler felt itchy and hot, like he was wearing a Tyler Leshuski bodysuit, like he’d had to put on a Him costume to join this family outing and it wasn’t fitting right.

  Antsy, his leg jumped in his seat.

  “I’m grabbing more snacks,” Tyler said, rising up. “Anyone need anything?”

  “Popcorn?” Via asked, smiling at him and digging in her pocket for cash.

  He waved away the money. “On me.” He had to fight with his face not to frown at her. She really thought he’d make her pay for her own popcorn? “Anyone else?”

  “Ice cream?” Matty requested, blinking innocently, as if this was everyone’s first rodeo.

  “Ix-nay,” Tyler said with the ease of someone completely accustomed to discipline. Some honorary uncles took pleasure in spoiling their honorary nephews. Tyler took pleasure in adding normalcy and boundaries to Matty’s life. “You’re already getting a snow cone in the seventh-inning stretch. Anyone else?”

  He let his eyes cast around the group and was thrilled when Sebastian held up his cup and jangled it around, indicating he wanted another Budweiser. They generally had a two-beer limit when spending time with Matty, but recently Sebastian rarely met the quota.

  “Me too,” Serafine said, jangling her own empty beer cup in the same way Sebastian had.

  “Right,” Tyler said, which was apparently the only thing he knew how to say to this woman today.

  Without another word, he scooted down the aisle and jogged up the cement stairs, taking them two at a time. He was relieved to see that even though internally he felt as clumsy as an elephant in ice skates, his natural grace and dexterity kept him from falling on his face. He ducked into the bathroom first and was both relieved and annoyed to see himself looking perfectly normal in the mirror. It was a strange thing to be the kind of person whose internal life never, ever showed on their exterior. Tyler knew, from experience, that his heart could be shredded like taco meat and he could still manage to look unbothered and pleasant on the outside. Perhaps it was partly due to his scrupulous attention to his outward appearance, his neatly cuffed shirts and permafresh haircuts ensuring he always looked put-together. Normally, he was grateful for that particular attribute, but today it bothered him.

  When he emerged from the bathroom he walked up to the nearest concession stand. Taller than most of the other patrons at the game, he had a bird’s-eye view of the crowd. The first thing he noticed was that every single male head—and some of the female heads—within twenty feet were all surreptitiously glancing in one direction. He sighed, already knowing the reason for it, and looked around until he spotted Serafine.

  “What’s up?” he asked, sidling up next to her.

  She immediately stopped her peering circle through the crowd. “I was looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Three beers and a popcorn is a lot to carry. Besides, Joy decided she wanted a water and I started feeling hungry myself.”

  He cleared his throat. “Okay.”

  They filed into the concessions line and stood side by side, a good sixteen inches of distance between them. He was conscious of the looks he was receiving, simply for daring to stand next to this exquisite creature.

  In a different world, he would have already dated and broken up with Serafine St. Romain. If she’d been just a skosh less attractive, or less spooky. If she’d made his palms sweat just a bit less. If there had been just a tiny bit less smoke in her voice, he’d have had no problem asking her on a date, texting her, sexting her, charming her, hopping into bed if and when she was into it.

  The problem was, he happened to live in this particular world, where she was a perfectly beautiful, spooky, smoky-voiced vixen who gave him heart palpitations and made him feel like a preteen who’d never even check-yes-or-no-ed a girl before.

  He shifted on his feet as they shuffled up the line, trying to ignore her and at the same time memorize every second of standing next to her. He frowned at himself, wishing he could pour a gallon of ice water over his head. Snap out of it, Ty!

  Tyler Leshuski was no inexperienced lad when it came to women, he reminded himself. When he wanted company, thanks to his extensive contacts list and the internet, it was the rare occasion that he couldn’t find it. He was good-looking and smart and funny.

  He watched a man bobble his beers as he double-taked on Serafine, almost breaking his own neck like a chicken.

  Tyler shook his head at the poor fool, knowing exactly how he felt. There was just something about Serafine St. Romain that made Tyler feel like his heart was wearing clown shoes.

  They finally made it to the front of the line.

  “What’ll you have?” asked the bored sixteen-year-old girl with a hairnet on. She was the only person in a twenty-foot radius who didn’t look entranced by Serafine or mystified by Tyler’s place in her life.

  “Ah, three Buds, two bottles of water, a large popcorn, a hot pretzel—no salt. And whatever she wants.” He pointed one thumb at Serafine and didn’t chance a glance over at her.

  “Mmm, chili cheese fries, please, and is there any hot sauce back there?”

  The girl pointed listlessly at th
e condiments stand and plugged the rest of the order into the register, holding her hand out for cash. Tyler wordlessly handed over a fifty.

  They went to the side to wait for their food.

  “What?” Serafine eventually asked him, turning to him with her arms crossed and those bright eyes burning a hole in the side of his head.

  “What what?” he asked back, his eyes stubbornly on the kid slapping their order together behind the counter.

  “I can feel your question for me. Just ask it.”

  He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. He really hated all this psychic bullshit. “You got chili cheese fries.”

  “So?”

  “So, I assumed you were, like, a vegan or something.” He’d eaten with her before at Sebastian’s house but had been too distracted by her presence to pay attention to what she ate.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”

  He couldn’t help but laugh as he finally turned to look at her. He took her in from her dark, complicated braid over one shoulder, to her makeup-less face, the silver-and-gemstone rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrists. He looked her over from her loose, embroidered top to her equally loose, embroidered pants and all the way down to what looked like a pair of velvet slippers. She carried with her the scent of sage and something else earthy. As painfully gorgeous as she was, her look screamed earth child.

  “Because you’re all...” He rolled a hand in the air, searching for the right word. “Organic-looking.”

  To his immense surprise, she actually burst out laughing. He was used to making people laugh. It was one of his favorite things on this earth. But he’d yet to make her laugh like that. He’d thought she was most likely one of those people who never laughed, merely smirked instead. But here he was, blinking down at a row of white teeth, her lips, so full in repose, almost disappearing in the stretch of her smile. He got that solar eclipse feeling again and when he tore his eyes away from her, a faded echo of her smile followed his vision for a moment, like he’d burned his retinas on her laughter.

  “I also happened to grow up in Louisiana,” she reminded him. “They run vegans out of town down there.”

  So, she was a meat eater. He couldn’t say why that pleased him. He couldn’t say much of anything, really, as befuddled as he was by her smile, her laughter. Why did he let this woman throw him off his game so much? It was annoying. She wasn’t actually magical, regardless of what she told people. There was no reason at all for him to treat her any differently than he would any woman he happened to be attracted to. He could do this.

  Determined to prove it to himself, his heart banged hollowly in his chest like a rock clanging against the side of a bucket. Holy crap. He was gonna do it. He was gonna finally do something about the hairs that, even now, were rising on the back of his neck. He’d been an athlete his entire life, and Tyler instantly recognized this feeling. This at-bat, at-the-free-throw-line, let-the-muscles-do-their-thing sort of feeling.

  “Let’s go out,” he suddenly blurted to Serafine, his voice a little too loud, his eyes on the ground instead of her face.

  Shit. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to factor in the whole clown-shoes effect she had over him. Could that have been any more clumsy? He wasn’t even facing her. He couldn’t seem to be able to tear his eyes away from the girl in plastic gloves brushing salt off his pretzel. Stop watching that, dumbass!

  Serafine turned to him, and, unfortunately, so did the woman next to them, obviously extremely curious to hear how all of this was going to pan out.

  “Uh,” Serafine said, her bright eyes on the side of his face. It became immediately clear to Ty that he’d just clicked on a swinging light bulb in a dark room, tied himself to a chair and begged a concessions line’s worth of Cyclones fans to mock him.

  Tyler made himself meet her eyes. He was an eye-contact sort of person, dammit! He believed in introducing oneself with his full name, in firm handshakes, in looking a person full in the face when talking with them. He’d been doing it his entire life! Why was this so hard with her?

  “If you want to,” he added on lamely. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Because I want to. Go out with you, I mean.”

  She just sort of stared at him for a moment.

  “I mean that I want to take you out,” he tried one more time. “I mean that if you’re into it, I’d love to take you out sometime.”

  “Order’s up,” the kid with the food called. Ten seconds later, Tyler found himself with two arms full of food and drinks and no answer yet from Serafine. He looked down at the hot pretzel and popcorn, the beers balancing in a tray and felt like he was tumbling through the air with his arms too full to catch himself as he fell. He wanted to toss the food in the trash and bike home.

  She stood there, the water bottles under one arm and her fries in the other hand. “Tyler...”

  Yikes. He could practically see the dot-dot-dot lingering in the air after his name. She’d dot-dot-dotted him. Not a good sign, my friend.

  * * *

  FIN HAD THE dream last night. Which generally meant that today would be a foul day, no matter how flirtatious the June sun was.

  It had come at dawn. Fin, twisted in the sheets of her bed, found herself trapped in a dream world with the last person she ever wanted to see again.

  Her mother, painfully beautiful, smoking a long, seductive cigarette and obscured by thick layers of smoke and otherworldly blur, sat in a chair in the corner of Fin’s bedroom. She looked exactly as she had the last time that Fin had seen her, over eighteen years ago.

  Long black hair, just like Fin’s, bright eyes that laughed cruelly at the world. Her mother, vividly gifted with clairvoyance, had always made it seem as if she knew absolutely everything.

  She said the same thing she always said to Fin when she met her in her dreams. A man will bring you down, Serafine. Just the same as he did to me. Think of the thing you want the most in this world and then sail it down the river. That’s what a man will do for your life. Trust me, daughter. Trust me.

  Serafine couldn’t remember if her mother had actually ever said that to her in real life or if this was her subconscious’s way of telling her that time was running out for her to get what she wanted the most.

  All Fin knew was that her mother had truly believed that a man had robbed her of everything she’d ever wanted. The man in question had been Fin’s biological father. And the way he’d robbed her had been by getting her pregnant. With Fin.

  It was ironic to Fin that a child was what had ruined her mother’s life when a child was what she herself wanted more than anything.

  Think of the thing you want the most in this world.

  Even now, standing here in the concessions area of a minor league baseball game, Fin could feel the rejection letter in her pocket. It had come to her in email form, but she’d purposefully printed it out and chunkily folded it up to carry it with her today.

  For the fifth time, her application had been rejected to be a foster parent in the state of New York.

  She carried the letter with her now as a sort of reverse talisman. A reminder of all the ways the world could get in the way of this thing she so desperately wanted. Her intuition had told her to print the letter out and bring it with her to this game, and now she understood why.

  Because Tyler Leshuski, Nordic blond perfection in his pressed jeans and polo shirt, had finally mustered up the courage to ask her on a date.

  She blinked at him. Was Tyler funny? Yes. Did it occasionally make her blood heat when she caught him surreptitiously watching her from across the room? Sure. Was he so handsome that even now she could count at least three different women letting their eyes take a little spring vacation from their husbands? Yup.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t like kids very much.

  It was the first time she’d ever heard him say it out loud, but not the fir
st time she’d gotten that vibe from him. She knew for a fact that the man had dated his way around Brooklyn and had no intention of stopping.

  She shifted on her feet and one sharp, folded corner of the rejection letter in her pocket jabbed into her thigh, fortifying her. There was no room for a man in her life. And there was certainly no room for a committed bachelor looking to get wet and wild.

  Fin looked into those nautical blue eyes of his, dreamy and proper all at once.

  “Trust me when I say that the two of us,” she said, “are not a match.”

  She held his eyes for a second more, nodded her head resolutely and then turned on her heel toward the condiments stand.

  There. That oughta do it.

  Tyler was actually the second man she’d had to reject today. The first was a smarmy, pushy businessman on the Q train who’d apparently thought that just because she’d accidentally jostled into him, she might want to hand over her digits. She’d set him straight in just as resolute a way as she had Tyler. Although with the man on the train, she’d had to ignore the “bitch” he’d tossed her way, seemingly under his breath. She’d found that one had to be firm when dealing with men. Much like children.

  “Hold the phone,” Tyler said after a moment, striding after her, his long legs easily catching up to her, beer sloshing over one wrist in his hurry. “That’s your entire answer?”

  She looked back over her shoulder as she pumped Frank’s RedHot over every inch of her chili cheese fries.

  “You want more of an answer than that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, a kernel of dread bursting into existence in her gut. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be, she internally begged him.

  “You don’t like me?” he asked, searching for clarification.

  “I like you just fine. You’re funny and sweet with Matty.” She shrugged.

  “You’re not attracted to me?”

  She swept her eyes over him, almost lazily. “You’re attractive.”